One Night in the Desert

As a break between 2 courses in Dubai and AbuDhabi, I went for a desert safari trip yesterday. The excursion started at 4:30pm. Well, you can't do it sooner as the temperature reached 40+ around noon. A team of 4WD Toyota Landcruiser's was on the way. If I paid more, I could try the Hummer. US$100 was just too much so I sticked to a cheaper Toyota option.

The exciting part started early when we were climbing up and down the sand dunes. It's the normal G version of the roller-coaster. But it's good enough to make you throw. The advice would be: don't eat too much before you go for a desert safari. Regreted not to bring my video camera. I managed to take a couple of photos but missed the most spectacular part.

Just before sunset we reached the camp site in the desert. I met two cabin crew of the Singapore airline. They had a two-day-break in Dubai, before flying to Moscow. The Singaporean guy was also using Nikon so he took some photos for me.

There was a camel range at the campsite. Obviously this was for tourist. 20 dirhams for a brief ride and photo-taking. 50 dirhams you can drive the quad (a small 4WD bike) for 15 minutes. I passed. A Bangladeshi worker invited me to feed and take photos with the camels. At the end he hinted for some money. I gave him 5 dirhams. Definitely not bad for a worker in Dubai.

After sunset, dinner was served. It was a simple Arabian BBQ buffet. After the "cruising" through the desert, you won't have much appetite for good food. Inside the campsite, the food, soft drinks, water, traditional costumes for photo-taking were included in the fee you paid.

There was a fine hawk for you to take photo with. She was not aggressive and not afraid of human. Seemed that she was quite used to meeting strangers.

After the dinner it was a belly dance performance. Frankly speaking, it was not as good as the one I had seen in Cairo. She dressed like a belly dancer but was not doing the dancing. But people seemed to be enjoying. The night ended with a all-light-out for 5 minutes. A quite time for everybody to watch the stars. The Singaporean broke silence by playing "Vincent" with his mobile phone. "Starry Starry Night...." There was a very bright star. It was the satellite as it was not blinking.

Fortunately, we didn't need to go through the sand dunes very much on the way back. What a night.